This week’s quotes could have been an amazing collection of tributes and shots at For Better or For Worse. It’s always mystified and annoyed me how much people have gotten into bashing Lynn Johnston’s strip, increasingly so in recent years. I just didn’t see the point. I liked the strip, and I was curious to see where she was taking these characters in the last days. But my god, the last few strips made me want to start mocking the work myself. For instance, ever faithful Iris is discussing Grandpa Jim’s health with new bride Elizabeth. But for whatever reason, Iris likens elderly Jim to a baby–prompting Elizabeth’s non sequitor of “I’d like to have a baby someday.” I was really hoping Iris would cold-cock Elizabeth and scream: “We’re talking about your grandfather, you self-absorbed moron!” Sadly it was not to be…for better or for worse.

But, no, I could not bring myself to gather such a collection of quotes. Instead, over the past few weeks, I’ve been bewildered by the active campaigns in some circles to deride Kramers Ergot 7. When the pricing on this anthology was first announced, I remembered thinking: “Don’t see myself buying the book.” But the way that some folks that I respect have seemingly gone out of your way to dismiss/deride/prejudge Kramer’s Ergot 7, I’m actively rooting for this book to succeed. And the backlash has made me more likely to buy the book. Fortunately for all the negative prejudgments just as many folks seem to be expecting great things of the book. Me? I’ll wait until I can read actual reviews of the book before making any final decisions.

“11 of those contributors are must-reads for me…33 pages for $125 bucks is a non-starter at my house; sorry, team artcomix. I know I’ve disappointed you terribly.”
- Alan David Doane in just one of his many reverse marketing posts about the book.

“Alan, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, no one gives a special shit about what you buy or don’t buy. Get over yourself, and move on.”
-Tom Spurgeon, in the same comments section, with a unique (for him) case of public potty mouth.

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He’s a respected veteran, tortured by the enemy but not always a friend of the establishment.  She was a political newcomer thrust unexpectedly into the biggest challenge of her career.

(Ironically, this time she’s the one with the health problems….)

Much more at Tigh/Roslin ’08!

What it comes down to is a lack of effort.

This is being passed around the internet. While a wonderful post, it’s not offering any new idea. The argument that so-called strong female characters often turn out to be hollow sexual objects has been kicked around the internet for longer than I’ve been writing; and it’s a well-known writing rule that flaws are what make a character compelling to readers.

But certain writers still don’t seem to understand this when it comes to female characters so these posts continue to be written and passed around. The notability of any such post isn’t that the idea is new, but that it needs to be stated in a new way to get the idea across to writers. This post offers a new mantra–”We need WEAK female characters”–that will be repeated for some time by bloggers but likely won’t penetrate the skulls of the majority of writers.
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Neil Kleid and Paul Salvi’s Action, Ohio came in second place in the Zuda competition a few months back, but now Kleid announces on his blog that the comic will return at Shadowline.com.

Kleid has quite a few irons in the fire, as well as a baby on the way in October, and unfortunately that means Shadowline’s gain is our loss … this week’s Take That! column, it turns out, is going to be his last. I want to thank Neil for contributing to the blog; while not all of his columns during his brief run were well-received, he had some that were absolutely brilliant. Best of luck with the new baby and all of your current work, and as always, Neil, you’re welcome to return anytime.

Earlier this month Action Philosophers/Marvel Adventures writer Fred Van Lente contributed one of our I ♥ Comics features, taking fans inside Rocketship Comics as he worked there for a day. Now Rocketship co-owner Alex Cox turns things around on Lente and interviews him for the Rocketship blog:

ALEX: We’ve spoken in the past about writers using themes throughout their work, and having more to say than just the details of a plot. If you had to pick one overall thematic point that pops up when you write, what would it be?

FRED VAN LENTE: I’m interested in people the most, like most writers, and what informs their decisions. I strongly believe that the most interesting dramatic struggle is the one you have with yourself: The battle between what you want to do versus what you should do; when you should act versus when it would be better to do nothing at all.

That’s why I like superheroes so much — their powers and identities allow you to take internal battles and make them literal, they let you dramatize those conflicts. Hercules is the strongest guy in the world, but bears the weight of every foolish thing he’s ever done — and in 3,000 years, he’s done a lot of them. Amadeus Cho’s mega-smarts make him his own worst enemy. Wolverine is at constant war with his own bestial nature. And so on.

Jeff Smith’s Boneville website is now offering stylish RASL T-shirts in a variety of sizes. They can be purchased here.

When I first came across the work of Rafael Grampá in last year’s 5 – the Eisner-winning anthology, with Gabriel Bá, Becky Cloonan, Vasilis Lolos and Fábio Moon — I was instantly intrigued. Then when I saw AdHouse Books’ announcement of Grampá’s Mesmo Delivery, I was excited. And now that I see the preview, I’m completely blown away. It’s gorgeous.

The 56-page comic, about an ex-boxer who must deliver a tractor-trailer of goods without looking at the cargo, is due in November.

Action Figure Hub has hi-res images of the first five action figures based on the movie The Spirit. The first five include the title character, The Octopus, Plaster of Paris, Sand Seref and Pathos. They are available for pre-order from Mezco Direct.

I had been aware of Diana Tamblyn’s comics for some time but for some reason hadn’t really made an attempt to engage her work until she sent me a batch of her books a month or so ago. Part of that may have to do with the nature of Tamblyn’s work itself. Although she has a very distinctive style — bold, thick lines, and an intriguing, almost off-beat blend of caricature and photorealism — she’s by no means a flashy artist, certainly not in her delineations or in her pacing and structure. That holds true for her choice in subject matter as well. She tells, simple, slice-of-life stories about everyday characters that focus more on small moments and quiet scenes than big narratives and weighty metaphors. That lack of, for want of a better word, pizazz, may initially make Tamblyn fade into the background, but judging by the progressive quality of her work, it’s not a place she deserves to be. (more…)

Guess who won’t be playing Catwoman and Jonah Hex

It should come as no surprise that a Warner Bros. representative has shot down the rumor that Cher will play an aging Catwoman in the sequel to The Dark Knight.

I’m a little disappointed, though. Oh, not that it’s untrue — really, did anyone think it was for real? — but that it was shot down so quickly. Four days is an awfully short life span for a casting rumor.

But another, longer-lived rumor also has bitten the bullet: Thomas Jane won’t be playing Jonah Hex in Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s upcoming adaptation.

That’s despite Jane’s Sean Young-like effort to convince the filmmakers he’s right for the role.

“He’s a great guy,” the directors said in a video interview with The Movie Blog. “But we don’t see the guy as Jonah Hex, to be quite honest with you. But we like him.”

The Ticker

• Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea has grossed $109.6 million in Japan since its July 19 opening, setting it up to become one of the biggest box-office hits of all time in that country. The Dark Knight isn’t faring quite as well there. [Variety, Slashfilm]

• Sony Pictures is auctioning a Spider-Man 4 “VIP experience,” which includes a set visit, walk-on role, meet-and-greet with cast, and a trip to the premiere. Proceeds to benefit Stand Up to Cancer. Bidding started at $5,000. [Sci Fi Wire]

• Relative unknown Max Makowski reportedly will direct Relativity’s adaptation of Voltron. [Latino Review]

• Robert Downey Jr. is in negotiations to voice a character in DreamWorks Animation’s superhero send-up Master Mind, produced by Ben Stiller’s Red Hour Films. Tina Fey also is expected to join the cast. [Hollywood Insider]

• Shots of a fully rendered CGI Astro Boy and concept art have leaked out from Imagi’s upcoming movie. [Astroboy Online, via First Showing]

A 20-minute LEGO Batman cartoon is being developed using the same engine as the upcoming video game.

Although details are sketchy, a producer for U.K.-based developer Traveller’s Tales tells GameIndustry.biz the cartoon will be a one-shot, at least initially, created “by a separate studio in the States.”

Warner Bros. bought Traveller’s Tales late last year.

“My understanding is that they will use the engine, the Maya files where the characters come to life, but they’ll be creating animated … I think it’s a 20-minute cartoon,” Rich Earl tells the website. “I’m personally quite intrigued to see how it comes out. Lego, every time they’ve had a new brand out, they’ve done some CGI stuff as well, but I think this will be quite different.”

Earlier this month Traveller’s Tales President Jon Burton hinted to Variety that children’s TV shows could be in his company’s future, now that it’s part of Warner Bros.

LEGO Batman: The Videogame is due in stores on Sept. 23.

I’m sure that one page of Trinity #13 — you know the one I mean — was plotted and probably drawn before I even thought about annotating this series … but still, fellas, come on!  You couldn’t have published it before I had a newborn to take care of?

(sigh) At least a good bit of fighting balanced things out.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

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LEAD STORY

“That Was A Sonic Boom” was written by Kurt Busiek, pencilled by Mark Bagley, inked by Art Thibert, colored by Pete Pantazis, and lettered by Pat Brosseau; Rachel Gluckstern, assistant editor; Mike Carlin, editor.

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I’ve written previously about the role of “plot” in corporate superhero serials.  I’ve also written about the need to honor forms of creative expression.  Last week, reporting on the long-promised, finally-announced Marvels sequel, Tom Spurgeon mentioned both:

Marvels was also kind of an odd book in that — as more than a few critics have noted — it’s best remembered for a kind of wistful re-imagining of superheroes from the vantage point of people on the ground when both the witness-to-history metaphor that it represented, as well as the criticism of loving superheroes too much that was obvious on a close reading, are now almost completely forgotten.

I think [the sequel] will underline how much the mainstream comic book business has changed in the last 12-15 years:  the big publishers cultivate and manage premeditated blockbusters based on plot progressions and positioning now, they tend not to wake up and realize they have hits in their midst based on folks’ reaction to a creative approach.

While that’s still true generally, I do think DC is changing, or at least moving away from the large-scale event.

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As the discussion spawned by Robert Kirkman’s recent call to arms somehow morphs into an argument about who has done more to hurt comics, Grant Morrison delivers his own sermon on the subject:

I suppose I’m slightly amused by the reformer’s zeal with which each new generation approaches the problem of ‘saving’ comics. It reminds me of humanity’s charming, self-regarding notion that it’s our job to ‘save’ a planet which has survived fine without us through several mass extinction events, climactic overhauls and planetary disasters.

I’ve been listening to people talk about ‘saving’ the ‘industry’ for over 20 years while comics have continued to be published and have, in fact, become better, to the point where the only conclusion I’ve come to is that comics are best ‘saved’ by sealing them in Mylar bags! Everything else is just messianic inflation. Just do good books and stop trying to be the savior of a whole medium that’s been doing okay without you and will continue long after you’re gone.

Yes, I think Kirkman’s right, in that I’d like to see more of our creative community unleashing their wild imaginations onto the page and less of the obvious ‘movie pitch on paper stuff’ that’s come about recently as a result of comic creators chasing the Hollywood dollar but I don’t have a problem with writers and artists working on Marvel and DC properties if they enjoy it. I’d rather read a good Green Lantern story by someone who cares than work my way through a ‘creator-owned’ project that’s been created solely to appeal to lowest-common-denominator movie executives.

That comes at the tail-end of a lengthy, and incredibly interesting, interview at IGN.com in which Morrison discusses his approach to Final Crisis and the “Batman R.I.P” storyline, fixing those weird discrepencies involving Final Crisis, Countdown and Death of the New Gods, and his take on characters like Aquaman and Supergirl.

(Via Dean Trippe)

Paramount is getting in on the “mobile comics” market.

Variety reports that the studio’s Paramount Digital Entertainment division as partnered with Singapore-based Omnitoons to deliver “manga-styled series” based on the hit British movie Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (which featured Kick-Ass star Aaron Johnson). Adaptations of Eagle Eye and the Mission: Impossible franchise will follow.

The studio views the comics primarily as marketing support for movies at, or just before, the time of their international release.

The comics will be available for download from major service providers and content distributors worldwide.

Tom Spurgeon cuts through all the crap and talks to cartoonist/editor Sammy Harkham about the upcoming volume of the Kramer’s Ergot anthology, the high price and format of which have caused some consternation in the comics blogosphere:

SPURGEON: Sammy, I know that you’re aware of some complaints about the price here and there. While I don’t want to turn this into a platform for those complaints, mostly because I don’t understand them, I don’t want to ignore the issue, either. So I was wondering if you could maybe simply list some of the factors that led to your pricing the book at $125, the way you might explain it to someone that’s interested in the price but not accusatory.

HARKHAM: Scanning. We paid for many artists to get their work professionally scanned, since the fidelity of cheap scanners doesn’t hold up when you look at the pages at print size.

* A low print run. If this was a book that had a larger print run, our price per copy would have gone down, but our readership is not big enough to warrant that. If Chris Ware ever decides to do a solo book in this format, with a print run similar to the Pantheon ACME book, I would think the cover price would be close to half of ours.

* We are using a very expensive paper, this stuff called NEW AGE. I am excited about it because it gives you the vibrancy of color you find on glossy paper, but doesn’t “feel” like magazine stock. It should make everything look really, really fantastic. We also have foil stamping on the cover, a sticker with quotes and bar code, and the books are shrink-wrapped to guard them from shipping damage. Those are not mega costs, but they add up.

* The book has to be bound by hand, since no binder at that size exists.

There’s lots more juicy information in the link, including a list of contributors. Dude, Matt Groening’s has a strip in there! That’s it, I’m sold.

In its sixth week on USA Today’s bestseller list, the Watchmen trade paperback slips just one spot to No. 14 as the “trailer effect” continues to fuel interest in the 1986 miniseries.

Here’s the real surprise, though: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, by Frank Miller, Klaus Janson and Lynn Varley, leaps onto the chart at No. 107.

I might’ve understood if the collection of the 1986 miniseries had appeared on the USA Today list last month, after the release of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight; the movie spurred increased sales of several Batman trade paperbacks.

But six weeks removed, this seems to come out of nowhere. We can’t even point to that Cher casting rumor as the cause, as the book chart is based on sales through Aug. 24.

USA Today’s list tracks all genres and formats of books sold in some 4,700 brick-and-mortar and online stores.

As you know, Lynn Johnston is closing up shop (sorta) this week, putting an end to the Patterson saga in her daily strip For Better or For Worse, though she will be going back in time to redraw older strips and occasionally add new dialogue and such. The Washington Post has an interview with her about her semi-retirement:

What the reflective Johnston, 60, realized was that after decades of her identity and creativity and livelihood being linked to a comic strip, she wasn’t ready to give it up.

“It’s in your blood — it’s part of your life. I don’t want to quit being a cartoonist,” Johnston says by phone from her Toronto studio. “It’s tough to put it down — you still think of gags. And at the same time, I knew I’d be looking at material that I’d want to improve.”

Lest you think it’s all kisses and hugs, the Washington Post also ran this editorial, entitled “Something for Everyone to Hate:”

True Foobsters loved to underscore their particular peeves: The way the characters ate (“smork, chomp, chew, smack”) or laughed with their mouths open and tongues out. Some loved to hate Elly’s obsession with housework, or Deanna’s blankly pretty face and lips. Little things can cause a Foobster to hurl the newspaper to the floor — especially the bad puns in the fourth panel, with those little Fooby bon mots about life. Lynn Johnston may think she has fans, but does she know she has such devoted anti-fans?

“I save up all my vitriol for this piece of . . . art,” says a woman named “Lia,” seen on a YouTube video posted last week, in which she critiques Elizabeth’s nuptial moment and wistfully ponders the end of a very long era.

“I predict [Elizabeth] will become a binge drinker, get a raging case of herpes and will eventually have to leave Anthony,” Lia says, with that special blend of devotion and cynicism unique to Foob analysis.

The strip does seem to spark a certain vitrol that Cathy, say, simply does not. I wonder why that is?

As an added bonus, here’s a Flickr set of Johnston at the recent Doug Wright Awards.

Having posted samples from his con sketchbook over at Flog, Reynolds has collected the whole darn thing into one nice Flickr set.

Over on the Hero Initiative blog, Jim McLauchlin has an appeal for shoppers at Ralph’s:

One supercool thing about Ralphs is the Ralphs Rewards card. It’s your standard grocery store “club card” that gets you discounts and whatnot. But you can ALSO register it with a Ralphs-approved charity, and EVERY time you shop and use the card, Ralphs will kick in a small percentage to the charity of your choice. It costs you, the consumer, NOTHING. It’s just Ralphs kicking in a couple bucks to good causes. See where I’m going with this?

Yes, The Hero Initiative is one of those Ralphs-approved charities, and since Ralphs just switched over from Ralphs Club cards to Ralphs Rewards, we need YOU to re-register your card for Hero, which is easy as pie (tho’ not quite as tasty):

Follow the link for more details if you shop at the grocery chain.